Andy & Ari On3 - Final Week 3 college football UPDATE | Florida-LSU, Georgia-Tennessee, Arkansas-Ole Miss

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

As week 3 in College Football is upon us, Andy & Ari provide the latest news and updates ahead of the loaded slate this weekend. What do the injury reports look like for the biggest games of the week? Have the lines changed in these matchups? Andy & Ari break it all down ahead of a jam packed Saturday. (0:00-0:58) On Today's Episode(0:59-3:15) BetMGM(3:16-8:05) Intro: SEC Availability Reports released(8:06-10:59) Arkansas-Ole Miss Report(11:00-13:38) Gametime(13:39-14:04) Introducing Tyler Shoemaker(14:05-21:52) Tyler Shoemaker joins(21:53-27:23) Kansas State at Arizona(27:24-29:31) Western Michigan at #9 Illinois(29:32-32:29) Wrapping up with Tyler(32:30-36:31) Ari's Business Idea(36:32-47:40) Dear Andy & Ari: Florida's playcalling(47:41-50:17) PaniniAmerica.net(50:18-58:17) Looking at Tulane and USF(58:18-1:11:49) The state of Wisconsin Football(1:11:50-1:13:14) Not getting into logic(1:13:15-1:14:04) Conclusion: See you Saturday! After the guys go through the injury reports, Tyler Shoemaker from VSiN joins to provide a final update on the spreads in week 3. What are Tyler's top plays this weekend? Find out here Later, we go through YOUR questions on the show, and our listeners have some GREAT questions.... Billy Napier as Florida's play caller? USF & Tulane, real CFP hopes? The state of Wisconsin Football All that and more in a jam-packed episode of Andy & Ari On3. Our show is presented by BetMGM! If you haven’t signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here’s how it works: 1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB.2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game.3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sureyou use bonus code CFB when you sign up! Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary. See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. This show is also brought to you by Gametime! Take the guesswork out of buying college football tickets with Gametime.Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code STAPLES for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Swipe. Tap. Ticket. Go. Download the Gametime app today! Visit Gametime.co. We’re also brought to you by Panini! Panini delivers the most collectible sports cards and memorabilia on the planet. Check out the new exclusive Arch Manning collection or the Panini Prizm Draft Picks College Football series. Visit PaniniAmerica.net to start your collection today. Join On3 today and get one full year of access to The Athletic included! https://www.on3.com/subscribe/C Watch our show on YouTube as well! https://youtu.be/0jKBVy6YUUE Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail]

On today's episode of Andy and Ari on three, the availability reports are out in the SEC. What does that mean for some of the biggest games of the season so far? Also, Tyler Shoemaker of Wieson joins us. You know how much Ari loves Tyler's picks, Tyler's plays. A lot of fun to follow. He's got three juicy ones for us this week, including one that involves those ICC availability reports we were talking about. Also, it is a dear, Andy, dear, R.E. Day, you ask the questions.

We provide the answers. We got questions about Florida and Billy Napier. We got questions about USF and what could happen in the American this season. Tulane figures into that one as well. Plus, a check-in on Wisconsin as the Badgers prepare to play Alabama in Tuscaloosa. All that more on today's Andy Nari on three. we are presented by betmgm and if you haven't signed up for bedmgm yet use the bonus code CFB as in college football and you'll get up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager

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and you'll receive a bigger payout if your bet wins. Good luck this weekend. You can fade me. You can fade me. You can follow Ari. Last week you should have followed me. Should have faded Ari. Does it flip this week?

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rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in seven days in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Don't forget, if you haven't signed up for bed at MGM yet, use the bonus code CFB and get your $1,500 first bet offer today. Welcome to Andy and Ari on 3. It is that time of the year, yes, where we wait on Wednesday nights with bated breath for the SEC availability reports. And actually the Big Ten is going to have those as well. We're going to see those in other leagues, too. So that is Wednesdays and Thursdays.

We're going to be sitting there watching the internet, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. And we were doing that on Wednesday night because of a couple of games. One, Florida at LSU, which we've talked about a ton this week because of the Billy Napier situation. We talked about what Brian Kelly said about Billy Napier. It's obviously DJ Lagway versus Gary. at Nussmeyer, a very good quarterback matchup. But I want to talk about the guy Ari that is going to snap to Garrett Nussmire. Braylon Moore, the center for LSU, who was excellent in his first game as an LSU tiger.

He transferred in from Virginia Tech this offseason. He was excellent against Clemson. He gets hurt the first play of the game against Louisiana Tech. The offense looks like it's stuck in mud the rest of the day. I don't know if it's necessarily because of Brayland Moore's injury, but you know me. I'm an O-Line guy. I think centers are really important. They touch the ball every play.

Well, Ari, Breland Moore shows up on LSU's initial eligibility report as questionable, which I actually view as a positive for LSU because it seemed when he went off that he was not going to be back this week. And there was a chance he's back this week. And Brian Kelly talked about that on Wednesday. So I think this probably bodes well for LSU. Yeah. I mean, like I was just happy to see that this isn't a long-term thing.

You know, you want teams that are very, very good, or frankly, every team to have their players healthy and to be at their best. And, you know, we spend all off-season looking forward to these games, and it's better viewing experience when those teams are playing at full capacity. So obviously, one, I'm happy for Raylan Moore and the fact that, although unfortunate that he got injured on the first play of the game last week, that this isn't something that's going to be a prolonged thing that keeps him out a long time. And two, I hope that LSU comes out.

at home, you know, in a season that they're, that we think could give fans what they've been waiting for for four years, an opportunity to showcase that. So I hope he plays. It'll be awesome. So Trades Green, the LSU tight in who got hurt in the Louisiana Tech game. Also, he's also listed as questionable. So not sure if he's going to play, but it would be a big boost if he could play too because he's a massive red zone threat. You saw him catch a touchdown past light in the Clemson game. A name that is not on Florida's availability report, and it's a promising thing, because Florida only listed the guys who were out. So obviously, Edge L.J. McCray, who had to have foot surgery this week because he got

hurt in the USF game. Dallas Wilson, the receiver, freshman, big time, not making his debut for Florida yet. He's still out. But who's not on this eligibility report? Caleb Banks, the defensive tackle. Florida's best defensive lineman annihilated LSU last year. This guy was awesome against LSU. he will make his season debut for the Gators in Tiger Stadium.

Big deal, big deal, right? I mean, as much as I've been dying to see and want to see Dallas Wilson at full percent, you know, for a full percent, because, like, you know how I am five-star receiver, ooh, you know, like that's how I thought that we could make the case that Florida's defensive line was going to be the make or break along with DJ Lagway and getting, you know, Caleb Banks back in there in order to, you know, I mean, think about also if LSU is banged up up front and Braylon Moore doesn't play.

Like, that's a pretty big circumstance in this game, I think. So huge, huge piece of good news. And it's also good to see that it's not questionable. It's just he's not on it. He's not on it at all. And no, look, he's got some rust to knock off probably. So I don't know if he's going to look like the Caleb Banks you saw late last season where he, I mean, he was really good.

But this was probably Florida's biggest retention priority last year going into the offseason because there was a chance that Caleb Banks could just go to the draft. I mean, he was, he played so well in the last part of the season that his draft stock was rising pretty quickly. And so getting him back, I remember when he announced he was coming back, I was thinking that's probably bigger than any portal edition Florida could make, that they got him to stay instead of going to the draft. So this will be really interesting to see how this changes this game.

Does Braylon Moore play? Is it DJ Chester who started it at Center last year and who replaced Braylin Moore against Louisiana Tech? We're going to find out. Also on the SEC availability reports, we go to the Ole Miss and Arkansas game. The Razorbacks are headed to Oxford. Ole Miss is an eight and a half point favorite. We saw Ole Miss quarterback Austin Simmons go down in the Kentucky game, Ari.

And Lane Kiffin had said, hey, we think he's going to play. He thinks he's going to be fine. He is listed as probable. So do expect Austin Simmons to start against Arkansas, which is obviously a big deal for Ole Miss. And there was some smoke earlier in the week that it's possible that he was more injured than we thought. So seeing him on this report here that he's going to play is a huge situation for Ole Miss. And, you know, you don't see a lot of people on the out part of theirs.

So this is a quarterback that you and I were very high on. and I think that Ole Miss has a chance to be a very good team, potentially a college football playoff contender. You know, I don't know if I feel as good about that now as I did, you know, seven days ago talking about the game game, but also too, maybe Kentucky just has some weird juju spell over them. I don't know. But this is a important game.

And, you know, I think that I've seen a lot of tailon green smoke this week, too, about, you know, hey, by the end of this weekend, Taylorin Green is going to be a top talking point. on podcast. I think that there is some sort of viewpoint out there that Arkansas is much better than they thought of that. This is Taylin Green's year to prove for the world that he's a top-tier quarterback because we spent little to no time

talking about him in the offseason, and he is somebody who's kind of got some freaky attributes and throws a pretty ball. Like, we'll see. If Arkansas is better than we thought they were, and Ole Miss is not as good as we thought they were, this could be a hell of a game. So I'm looking forward to that one as well.

Yep, it's going to be very interesting. So got that, got South Carolina Vandy in the SEC. You've got some big games in the Big Ten as conference play starts. You've got USC playing Purdue, Oregon Northwestern, probably not that big of a game, but it is happening. In the ACC, Clemson, Georgia Tech, another big conference game. This weekend, in terms of things to look forward to on Thursday heading into Saturday, is so much better than last weekend. Now, last weekend, I thought for the real ball lovers,

was a really entertaining day of games. I thought that we got a lot of high-level entertaining football last week, despite the fact there was only one top 25 matchup this week. When you look at Clemson, Georgia, and you look at Wisconsin, Alabama, and... USF, Miami. There's a lot of games out there. Florida, LSU, obviously, we got done talking about that.

There's a lot of games out there, Georgia, Tennessee, for instance. like we have we have some games this week and I think that there's games in every window too so there's one you didn't mention are and and and i think it's pretty interesting Notre Dame at Notre Dame so the get in price for Texas A&M Notre Dame has gone down and that's why you need to be checking your game time app every day game time is one of our sponsors you download that game time app you redeem the code staples you get $20 off your first purchase terms apply the get in price for Notre Dame and Texas A&M has gone down. It's now below 200 bucks.

There's some, I believe, is the low as like 157, I think. But if you look, tickets that are pretty good seats that were going for 300 something the other day are now in the hundreds of the 200s. And on the game time, of course, you can look and see exactly where you'd be sitting, exactly what that looks like relative to the field. And the number you see in terms of price is the number you will pay. they're not going to just jam on a bunch of fees at the end. So go to GameTime.com download the GameTime app, redeem the code Staples for $20 off your first purchase.

And the thing is that's eloquently. And I never get to tell my game time story. Oh, tell your game time story, please. I had a buddy in town who's a Yankees fan a month ago before a college football season started and we had weeknights open. And he wanted to go see the Yankees and the Rangers in Dallas or in Arlington. And we waited until the last 10 minutes before the first pitch, and we got these tickets for like $100 that should have been $500. And attached to it was, and all you can eat and all you could drink buffet.

Like you got to sit like down. This is the buffet we talked about on the show. Yes. Yeah. But we got our tickets on game time. We waited until the last minute and they had to drop them because if you don't sell your tickets, you get nothing. And I ate 9,000 calories because of game time.

Well, so we. We had a similar situation in terms of the last minute thing. And this is why I say, keep checking your game time app. If you're not sure you want to go to the game, but you think you might want to leave the option open, just check game time day of, day before. Because it does drop as you get closer. My wife and I were trying to decide because we really wanted for one of us to be able to take my daughter to see Taylor Swift last year. And the prices were just, we couldn't do it. and the morning of the show, my wife gets up and basically says,

I'm going to check just one more time. The prices had dropped so dramatically overnight that we were like, this is a sign. And so they ended up going to the show and had a blast. Having tickets is a perishable asset. That's exactly right. So keep checking that GameTime app every day. And then when you're ready to make that first purchase,

you're doing the code staples and get 20 bucks off. So, Ari, we're going to get back into that Florida LSU discussion, though, with our friend Tyler Shoemaker of Visan, one of your favorite people, one of your favorite handicappers, because he has some very interesting thoughts on that game. And his data tells us a lot about what could happen on Saturday night in Death Valley. So let's talk to Tyler Shoemaker from Vison. All right, Tyler, a couple weeks ago, you came on. gave us some winners. And the part that depresses me a little bit about that is now you're coming to bring us some more. And the first game you were going to talk about, we're on opposite sides of.

So I'm now extremely nervous about Florida LSU. Well, first of all, it's a good thing I wasn't on the show last week. I know Ari did give out some of my picks, but last week was terrible for me. I'll be the first to admit. So I think you guys had the foresight. Like, he's due for a bad one. Let's not have him on this week. I'm back.

We thought about that with Ari, too. We thought about not having Ari on last week, too, but he weasled his way on. I wonder if, I wonder if there's a correlation between those two things. I don't know. Andy, I'm confused because I thought that you were not on the opposite side of this. So let's get into it because I thought. No, I picked LSU to cover. You did?

Yeah. Oh, wow. Because, and I'm going to let Tyler explain what he's thinking. I'll tell you what I'm thinking is. seen a lot of the Billy Napier era, obviously, up close. And they never seem to do the thing they're supposed to do. So what they're supposed to do this week, if you watch the game, you rewatch the USF game, it's like, oh, they did make some mistakes, but they weren't that far off. And if they just clean some of this stuff up, this will be a really competitive

game. So logically, Florida should cover here, whether LSU wins or not, should be a close game. I just now at this point, and maybe because I'm too close to it, I can't believe that anymore. But Tyler, I want you to explain why you've got Florida plus seven and a half here in Baton Rouge. Yeah, so my number on the game is LSU minus five. I think there's a couple of things here that put me on Florida. Obviously, that starts with a number, of course, LSU minus five being my projection. So getting a full full touchdown here is a great number to get. The other thing is I think this is a really good bounce back spot for Florida. Obviously, they lost a really huge game last week against South Florida. Everyone's been talking about that. And now we kind of go

into the mode where everyone's going to write Florida off. I think the thing that people may have swept under the rug last week after LSU beat Clemson and week one and everyone was like, wow, is LSU the best team in the country. And then Clemson goes out and sucks against Troy and LSU kind of sucks against Louisiana Tech. So I don't think LSU is quite as good as the public perception is. I think we're getting a really inflated number here. The way these teams were priced in the preseason with their win totals and how they've been priced in these individual games so far by the market, my market estimated formula projects Florida as a three-point favorite based on what the market itself has told us to date.

So LSU being a seven and a half point favorite here doesn't make a lot of sense, you know, in the data. So I'm going to ride with the Gators here. Well, the one thing that I have known about you since I've been tailing you for years is that, you know, early in the season, your data still is very much preseason heavy, right? Like, what week do we get to? Because it's like, there have been times where. the data has been wrong right

and it takes time to figure it out like when do you feel like is the turning point in the season between you know not relying so much on you know the data that you have in the offseason to the data in the season

I think I mean generally speaking I would say probably midseason but it really is a case by case basis because each week when I update the ratings I'm looking at how far off the updated ratings are from the preseason priors. And when I see a team, you know, and I lesson learned last year, I know we talked about Florida State already and that debacle last

year. I learned a little bit from that in that. So this year, every week when I update the numbers, I look. And if that number is really far off on the 2025 data from the preseason data, I'm going to be more aggressive in adjusting that team to try to catch up and get ahead of it and not get left betting a Florida state every week like we did last. year. Yeah. Because I we do our pick show before you have your completed numbers. And I can't recall if you had Florida on Sunday or Monday or if that's a later development. But like I like Florida just based on the common knowledge of like, A, they're probably not as bad as people think they are. B, LSU might be overinflated in the sense of like what did the Clemson game

tell us. Now LSU might be the second best team in the country. We're still trying to figure that out but there's still that possibility out there and the fact that it's like the SEC opener for two teams and this is a big game and like how much do you overcorrect from preseason notion just in terms of like our thought nine and a half when it opened felt good

I didn't get that but seven and a half two scores still just feels good just based on conventional knowledge of the way the sport works yeah yeah exactly I mean full transparency I bet Florida plus nine and a half earlier in the week but I mean truthfully there's not a huge difference in terms

of how the, just because of the way the game scored, there's not a huge difference between seven and a half and nine and a half. So I still really like it at seven and a half. The one thing about this game that I do find interesting is we got the availability reports last night. And I'm going to ask you about those in a second because I think that's interesting. It's a newer thing for us in college. The NFL has had them for years. But Braylon Moore shows up on LSU's availability report is questionable. When he went out after the first play of Louisiana tech game, this is the center. who transferred from Virginia Tech had an incredible game against Clemson.

I thought, okay, he's probably out for the Florida game. DJ Chester comes back in, the guy who started at Center All of last year. Florida's D-Line had their way with him last year. That's probably a good thing for Florida. Now I'm looking at him potentially playing in this game. It's like, okay, I don't know. How much does that sort of thing affect your thinking? Not necessarily this particular instance, but we talked earlier about Austin

Simmons showing up on the injury report for Allmiss, the starting quarterback. So how much do these availability reports and the knowledge of the injuries change or not what you do? I mean, truthfully, in college especially and especially for like an offensive lineman in particular, I mean, it can affect, you know, if my projection on the game was LSU minus eight and I was thinking about, you know, laying the seven and a half with LSU, it'd be like, like, okay, that's when that would come into play maybe if the number was close, but it's just so hard to quantify, especially if it's not a quarterback or to a lesser

degree of receiver. But if it's not a quarterback or someone that's touching the ball frequently, it's just very difficult to quantify that. And I found it's just a slippery slope of trying to manually account for this and that and the butterfly effect, because the thing you don't really know is how the coach is going to scheme around that potentially and that sort of thing. So it becomes a giant guessing game. So I would rather just let the numbers be the numbers than try to get inside the coach's head of how they're going to, you know, plan around that. If a quarterback or a top receiver or a

corner, like do you ever just lay off a game because of it? Certainly. So, you know, like if Ohio State was playing Texas again and Jeremiah Smith was out, that would certainly make me, you know, if my projection was close, that would certainly, you know, I would have to adjust that a couple of points for sure yeah okay andy so we're going to go probably to another game that's kind of the same as this in a different way maybe not as high stakes because florida we thought was potentially a play i mean i guess kansas state to a certain extent was too right like a team that could make the play off and remember what hey are you remember we're at big 12 media days and brettman murphy asked all the the big 12 coaches you know in an informal poll basically who do you think

is going to play in the championship game the most common answer from the big 12 coaches was Kansas State, and here they said they've lost Iowa State. They've lost to Army. Now they're going to Arizona State as a dog. This is a weird one. It's a non-conference game, even though they're now both in the same conference, because it was scheduled before they were in the same conference. But Tyler, this feels like, well, Dead Cat bounce feels like the wrong term to use for the Wildcats. But is that what we're dealing with? Is this a, hey, this is your last chance to show us, you are what we thought we were going to be, and then we're giving up on you after this? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, to Ari's point earlier, and again, referencing the Florida State thing again, because I'm just, Ari and I, I think, both are traumatized by that from last year. But this, again, everyone coaches, you know, the data said Kansas State was going to be a really good team this year. We have no reason to believe that they're not. They have talent. They have an extremely talented quarterback. They have a very good coach and good program stability. So it's not like we thought they were going to be like a flash in the pan type team

that just rebuilt through the portal and that sort of thing. Like they have some program stability. So my numbers make this game Kansas State minus six and a half. And again, I referenced the market stimulated formula based on how they've been priced so far this year. And Kansas State should be a 10.5 point favorite based on how they've been priced. So I think this is a huge overcorrection. You look at how Kansas State played in the one power four game that they've played and that was the get the opener against iowa state down to down all the the actual

metrics other than the scoreboard which i understand is the most important but all the down to down stuff they were better than iowa state in that game they just had some really costly mistakes that ended up giving iowa state that three point win so i i again i'm applying the same logic to kansas state here that i did to notre dame after the northern illinois loss last year and people continue to yell at me and we continue to cash tickets with Notre Dame because they were who I thought they were, even though they had a terrible loss early in the season. So I'm hoping that that's the case and it's not a case of Florida State. Tyler, how often are teams not what the data says? I mean, I would say that's more infrequent than like, and that's why, you know, that's why

myself, that's why I know SP Plus and a lot of these predictive models. That's why we all use the preseason priors because they have back tested to be more accurate, more predictive of team strength than getting caught up in, you know, a two or three game sample size early in the season. Yeah, I think it's just crazy to think, though, that like Kansas State clearly, there's something off there. And like, I don't know what it is, but then also having gone to Arizona, this does not seem like an Arizona win to me.

And that's the thing here. I think if Arizona does beat them, this is to Tyler. point about Florida State last year where maybe you waited a little too long, I think if Arizona does beat them, you say, okay, they're clearly not what we thought they were. We're going to look at them differently for the rest of the way. Ari, you and I can get into that later about what that means if they do lose. And just so you know, Andy, we were betting Kansas State like into week eight and nine last year, weren't we? Or Florida State. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a title wave of mistake for me the last the last florida state game i remember betting was the

clemson game and i'm pretty sure that was like late october early november so we rode that baby into the ground so so you will not make that like i i i want to let's let's let's make a compact here gentlemen if arizona covers here stay away from kansas state the rest of the year just manhattan's off limits to you yeah because i had kansas state in the opener too remember I thought they were going to beat Iowa State. And I thought that, let me say this, and Tyler is right about this. If Kansas State plays the way it did in Ireland, at least that competitively, now they turn the ball over a few times. There's a sloppy game in the first half for both teams.

So, but then the last two weeks have been an absolute dumpster fire. So part of this, too, is just like, you know, what, you know, pick your adventure. But I like the notion of going into a game where the data is this lopsided and just kind of rolling the dice off. that because I feel like Kansas State probably is much better than what we saw the last few weeks. And they've also had a long history of playing tough, competitive, competent football. So I don't know if I think that they're going to be a dumpster fire this year. And, you know, I think last year with Florida State, not the pile on DJU, but like, if you just have the wrong person catching the snap on every play, like there's just only so much you can do to overcome that.

So, and I don't think that's the problem at Kansas State. So we'll see. we will now you got another one for us tyler and and this is this is a sandwich game and i find this one very interesting so illinois went down to duke and beat the heck out of duke huge win for the alina next week they play indiana and one of what might be one of the biggest games in the big ten all year western michigan comes in the middle of this western michigan comes into champagne as a 27 and a half point underdog tyler you are on the Broncos.

I am. I wish this line was still 28 because earlier in the week you get 28, 28 and a half, but I would still play it at 27 and a half. I only project 26 and a half. So we're not getting a huge value on my number necessarily, but this is where I always talk about kind of the art and the science of handicapping. So we do have the science on our side, not as much as we generally do. But I think the art here is where is what leads me to the Broncos. Illinois, if you just final score watch and you look last week, it looks like they beat the crap out of Duke. But if you actually watch that game as someone who had Duke plus three in that game, again, Illinois, I'm sorry, Duke just handed Illinois scoring opportunity after scoring opportunity

because of stupid mistakes, a muffed punt, stuff like that. And I mean, it was tight for a half and Duke was in Luke Altmeyer's face a lot of that game. Yeah. So for me, this is a combination of Illinois is not nearly as good. that final score indicated, and which is, you know, I think how a lot of casual betters are, that's how they place their bets. It's like, well, that team looked awesome last week. They're playing Western Michigan. Who's that? I'm going to bet on Illinois minus these points. Surely they'll beat them by four touchdowns. But you mentioned it, Andy.

Illinois's got, uh, Indiana on deck. And I've got Indiana as a two and a half point favorite in that game right now. So, you know, Illinois's got to got to really come ready to play next week or they're going to lose. So I think my assumption will be their, focus is going to be predominantly get in this game, get a win, get out, and focus on Indiana. So I really like the spot and we've got the number on our side here. So I'm going to back the Broncos. Yeah. Also, Illinois is a wind tunnel. I don't know if you guys heard that. Yeah, you've made that very clear on the show. Again, Kurt Kittner didn't seem to mind. Luke Altmeyer doesn't seem to mind. So we'll find out. But Tyler, thank you so much for

these i cannot wait to see how this works out and again the next time we have you on if arizona wins this game i mark it down i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna check like are you guys betting kansas state behind my back like are you lying to me about this dude is there a problem do we have to make you admit you have a problem and i know i know that we uh also are kind of talking about kansas state but i wonder if florida's going to fall under the same umbrella like if Florida comes out and gets their doors blown off, I wonder if the numbers are going to reflect that, too, because sometimes

what we have in terms of the data, what he has, I say we, I'm just so bought into this guy. You're just glomming on like a parasite. The thing is we think DJ Lagway is incapable of being Superman. I think that. I don't know what Tyler thinks, but that's what I think.

And he was not Superman against USF. What if he comes out has one of the games that he had last year. Like, you cannot, I don't know if I can predict that. I think that's, I think that's what the market is telling us people think is going to happen. That's why the line has gone down toward Florida. But I, and also, I may be just too tainted by the negativity here in Gainesville. And I'm going too far the other way on this thing.

Yeah. We'll see. I'll take two possessions in a SEC opener at now. night. We'll see what happens. But Tyler is really sharp at this, pun intended, and I'm excited. And I know the readers and the listeners were really excited about your plays after week one. So I don't recall how you did in the three that we gave last week, but I think it was it was either two in one or two in a tie. Yeah. The three that we gave out on the show did well last week, if I recall correctly, because we have a few people at On Three who played those plays and did, and I think, because one of the plays was Iowa plus three. And I don't remember a lot of people got three and a half.

That was the tie. I can't remember what the other two were. Do you? Yeah, off the top of my head, I do not remember. But I do one last point here on Kansas State and Florida. I think the difference between those teams and the Florida states of the past and some other teams, and again, not to pile on like Mike Norville or anything. I think by all accounts, I think the players really like playing for Billy Napier.

And again, Chris Kleinman has established himself at Kansas State. So I think that that relationship between coach and player, I think, is going to keep those teams afloat. Now, again, we can talk next week, and maybe I look like an idiot for saying that. But that's what I'm clinging on to for now. We'll see how that situation plays out and we'll talk next week. It's why Florida beat LSU last year. So the logic tracks, even if I don't necessarily believe it this time. So Tyler, thank you so much.

All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Tyler. Appreciate you, man. yeah do you want to hear my business proposition to you if like podcasting doesn't work out for us yes um always always up for a backup plan do you have a hotel tonight the hotel app or do you just we just use marriott but i don't know if you're i just usually yeah used the i booked directly how is there no app for airplane tickets that are perishable like if you like go online you're like no next

few days free. Let's see what flights have 27 open seats and I can get one for 50 bucks. You know what's interesting about that, Ari? I've never noticed that they do that on the airlines. The airlines seem to just jack them up as you get closer to the date. They do. My thought on flying is that your flight is either full to the brink or there are 25 open seats. Like it's never one or the other. And I think most of the time they're full. Okay. so I don't know how often this would be, but it would be kind of cool. It's like, oh, you're a young man who listens to the show

and you're in love with this beautiful girl and you guys are dating and you're on the spontaneous portion of your life. You need to get from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. right now, today. Like, what if you don't even need to? Like, what if you just opened up the flytime app? And you're like, oh, crap, I live in St. Louis. And there are flights to San Diego right now for $37. one way because this flight's empty

and they need to sell the tickets and get some of the depreciating value of the I want to fly to San, like are there people out there that would fly to San Diego for the weekend just because the tickets are that cheap? I think there are. I would do it. That's just, I've always had that thought of like, why does airline, why do airline

tickets allow their seats to be wasted? I do wonder, though, also they know how many people are on the plane, so it affects probably how much fuel they put in the plane. Maybe there's something. There's probably a money reason for that where they they can counteract the loss on the empty seats oh okay yeah maybe that's the answer maybe it's if you pay uh 73 dollars for a one-way ticket from st louis to

san diego that your your weight would cost a hundred dollars in fuel and then they would actually lose twenty seven dollars from you being on there okay maybe i don't know yeah that's there has to be a reason otherwise i think somebody would already have done this yeah because it's It exists in hotels, and I think Hotel Tonight has changed the way it does things because you can book way in advance now. But like, if a hotel room goes unused at night, then that's not called Hotel Tonight, but now you have to book way in advance. So it's like hotel like, no, hotel like four months from now. You back when the app came out, when I was in my 20s, it used to be you wake up that day. And if you need a hotel room somewhere that night and you don't have one, you can go check this and they'll give you a discounted rate for hotels that aren't booked.

Yeah. So that was a wave to ensure that hotels would have, you know, rooms that were available. Well, in places like price line would do that, but they wouldn't tell you the name of the hotel. They'd be like, this is the type of hotel it is, but we're not going to tell you which one it is so you book. You get thrown into a, you know, motel sick or something. You're in your tough shape. But like, I don't know. I just always thought, like, if you have something you're selling and it's valueless once something starts or once an event happens,

why can I not buy a Southwest flight for 40 bucks to go from Dallas to Scottsdale and see my parents for a day because the seat is empty already. And I'm sure we've got some listeners and viewers who work for the airlines who could probably tell us the answer to that. And they don't want to abuse it. That's the other thing, too, of like, I'll just hop on whatever flight is empty today and I'll get a, but, you know, that's a risk you don't want to take if you have to be there. I don't know.

So if you work for the airlines and you, you know why this is, why this doesn't exist, and there's probably a good reason for it, just send us an email. Andy Stapleson3 at gmail.com, R.E. Dot Wasserman at On3.com. Just like you would if you had a Dear Andy, dear Ari question about college football. Speaking of which, it is time for Dear Andy and Dear Ari, we got to answer some questions. Some are more statements than questions this week, Ari, and that's fine. I like statements. I like statements. Because they also call back to some things that our folks have emailed us over the off season. And we've discussed these things and we've discussed them in theory.

And now we're seeing what actually happens. So we'll start with Raul. And Raul sent us an email in February about how depressed he was. He's a Florida fan. In February, sent us an email saying, I don't like the direction that this is going, Billy Napier didn't hire a play-calling offensive coordinator. When he went to hire some extra brain power for his offense, he hired John Donovan as an analyst,

and John Donovan's been in some pretty sluggish offenses at Penn State and Washington. So why should I be optimistic about this? And I said, hey, I get it. Billy Napier is going to kind of ride or die with him being the offensive play caller. And we know this because he didn't hire one. Well, Raul wrote this on Saturday night, I'm assuming either as Florida was losing to USF or just afterward, because it makes a prediction. And here he is, says, if we have competent offense coordinator play caller and not Billy Napier's play caller, offensive coordinator, we're up 216 instead of 126 at the half, and we're having more hopeful conversations tonight. They weren't actually up 126, were they?

The bottom line is that Napier had a chance to freshen things up on offense, but he stubbornly didn't, and here we are. I bet he finally fires himself as offensive coordinator play caller tonight, and we're referring to September 6th, Saturday night, or tomorrow, but can it look good if Russ Callaway is given complete control the offense right now? Now, why I pick this question is because I mentioned this when I came back on Monday from Billy Napier's press conference. Billy Napier was asked directly, are you still the primary play caller? And he said yes. He said, and then he was asked, was there any thought of giving that up?

And he said no. And it's just what I told you, Raoul, in February. He's going to ride or die this way. He's going to stand or fall calling the plays. I texted you guys about this on Monday.

And I have no recollection on whether we discussed this or not, but I wanted to give you just a way of looking at it. So if you were in a job for two or three years and you were convinced of your process being the best way, but for the first two or three years of that existence and that job, the results that your employer was looking for weren't coming. Would you, and you knew that if you didn't fix that the results weren't coming was going to result in your termination, would you rather continue to try to control it yourself with your own hands, convinced that you are the correct one in the scenario, or would you want to let go of it and try one last different thing to try to save you?

Do you have a brief but very important period where it actually worked for once? Sure. I want it to be the same exact, I want it to be the same exact scenario as what we're talking about here. But I think that there's two ways of looking at it. You're the person who is the captain of the Titanic and you're staying and you're holding the wheel, right? Or, you know, there's somebody else on board, another captain or another. Who might be able to dodge an iceberg. You might be able to dodge.

I mean, that's a terrible example because the dire, it wasn't dire until you hit the iceberg. But what I'm saying is, do you want to live and die with your hands on the steering? wheel? Or is it possible that you're doing 85% of the thing right, but the last 15% somebody else could drive the bus better than you? I just, I personally think it's noble that he wants to go down this way or thrive this way. He's not done yet. But I also think that maybe a critical mind would say, hey, the thing to do would be try something different because the results just aren't there yet. And then maybe that one different thing is the difference between great success?

I mean, because how much worse can it be? They had nine points at halftime against USF last week. Well, here's the thing. I think there are people who would do that. I'm not sure Billy Napier is one of those people. I think he's one of those people who, when he thinks he's right,

you're not moving him off that spot. I think that if you went back in time and looked at every coaching firing of the past 10 years, a vast majority of the results of those firings were because the person in charge was not willing to admit they were wrong about something oh i i think that it goes way beyond coaching i think they're in all walks of life you see that and it's it's probably the most common thing where and what do we always say about nick saven what was one of his greatest attributes he was able to evolve and adapt and change when things

were stale. Correct. He would recognize it and was not so egotistical that he wasn't willing to change it. Because that's the other thing that's so hilarious to me, as you look around the country at great coaches, nobody gets an extra feather in their cap because they're the ones calling the plays. So from an actual, like, all they care about is, are you winning games and losing games and are you in charge? So in the actual like respect earning Pantheon, like who calls the place is actually not that important. Now, I think that this is more so that he thinks he can do it better than somebody else. Correct. And you can do it better than somebody else and it's not working than you are to blame in multiple regards. So also, it's just like, do you want to control

your own fate or do you want to try something different than allow somebody else to control it? I understand both sides of the thought process. Yeah, and the thing is, I think he is made abundantly clear where he stands on this. This is what he's going to do, and it either will work or it won't. And I think that's probably the frustrating part for Florida fans right now, because they're like, well, we like to see DJ Lagway with somebody else, Colin plays. Just to test this thing, just to have a control group here. But I don't think you're going to get that.

I think whatever's going to play out is going to play out. Like I said, the schedule is going to take care of this one way or the other. You will know, probably by the Georgia game, what's happening here. So, I mean, also, other coaches have broken through in the recent past by giving up calling plays. Ryan Day is a completely different coach because he stopped calling plays. Is he completely, is Brian Hartline calling all of them now? I think he gave up the main, I'm sure that he's involved. And I think that also being a head coach who doesn't call plays

doesn't mean you're not involved in it. Mike Norville definitely gave it up this year to Gus Malzon. We know that. Didn't Kenny Dillingham give it up before last year, too? You did, Marcus Royo, yeah. So, like, I mean, it's not like, I can't fathom how much stuff you are in charge of on game day as the head coach. And I cannot fathom how you could call plays perfectly.

Right, and people wonder how that manifests itself. I'll give you an example. let's say there's a bang, bang, fourth down play, your team's on defense, you're the offensive play caller, or not even a fourth down play, bang, bang, just bang, bang play that the officials may have gotten wrong. And you may need to give or buy some extra time for the replay booth to look at it to notice that they got it wrong. And everybody on the sideline and in the booth is saying, hey, we need to maybe call time

out or we need to find a way to delay this, send some subs in, do something to let them have some more time before the next play gets run. And they can't find the head coach because he's busy meeting with the offense or he's busy talking to the OC about the play calling and the offensive game plan. Like that is, that's how that manifests itself on game day as a problem. So now look, there are offensive play callers, and we've seen defensive play callers, too, who do fine. Like, Lincoln Riley has always been a pretty good coach as an offensive play caller. You know, and there are other examples of this, too. So it's not like there's only one way to do this.

There's one good way and one wrong way, and it doesn't work that way. It's different for everybody. Is Lincoln Riley the most decorated off a head coach play caller in the country? or who am I forgetting? Well, Ryan Day probably was until he gave it up to Chip Kelly. But Ryan Day also never reached any expectation. Sark. Sark.

Which, by the way, we yell at for his Red Zone play calling. Yeah. But Sark also has, yeah. I mean, Sark right now is what Ryan Day was two years ago. Yep. Can't quite get over the hump. Yeah. But still.

Amass is more talent or anyone as anybody in the country and can beat anybody. And it seems like a matter of if, not when, the matter of when, not if they'll win a championship. So Sark is probably the best of the head coaches who still call plays. But I wonder if, like, what if Texas, you know, loses to Oklahoma this year, makes the playoff, loses early, and then they change their offensive play calling strategy and then win the national title next year. That's the same arc as Ohio State.

It's exactly the same arc. So maybe, you know, he hasn't given it up yet, but maybe he will. Not that he's the problem, but it could happen. Yeah, as I said, he seems like he doesn't want to. He doesn't seem that open to it. Yeah. Like the guys that give it up, usually like, fine. I don't, I really don't want to do this anymore.

Yeah. So. Or recognize that they, I mean, maybe some people are better at multitasking than others. But Ryan Day's temperament as a human being on the sideline is much different, except for one game, I think, than as a result of this. So who knows, but, you know, Billy Napier knows his. his life and his or his his life as Florida's head coach is in his hands and if he wants to be the one that controls it then good for him and he'll like he'll stand or fall with it I think that's exactly what's going to happen he's either going to keep the job or lose the job and

this decision will probably be the reason that whatever happens happens are you want to rip a pack before we talk about the team that beat Florida last week sure so visit pinini america.net to start your collection pinini the makers of the best and most collectible sports cards on the planet get your favorite college and NFL stars i am ripping a luminance pack right here and we looked we opened one of these the other day we had a little little success we got you know some some metal numbers in there but let's see what else you got we got a jerome bettis right here richard seymour man i feel like i am uh I'm a teenager again.

Oh, the best accent in football, Xavier Legette, former South Carolina receiver, plays for the, for the Panthers now. The Nigerian nightmare Christian Akoye. Oh, never heard of this guy, Lamar Jackson. That one's numbered. Yeah. Right. It is not, actually.

It has the gold outline, but it's not numbered. But this one, I believe, actually, no, this is not. not numbered. It's just very cool. Bright beginnings Ladd McConkey with the with the jersey swatch in there. Here is a fusion Malik neighbors. Former bowling green tight and Harold Fanon Jr. We've seen the Lauder. I've ever seen that. Yes, that's exactly right. Zai Alexander LSU. We got the autograph version of this last time. And then Zikari Franklin, who I think Illinois would like to have him this year. He's a Las Vegas Raider now.

That Lamar Jackson had to have been numbered because we didn't have a numbered or an auto in that pack? We had a jersey swatch. Okay. That's what you got. So we had that lot of a chunky jersey swatch. So visit Panini America.net to start your collection today. What's you got?

I got this one. I just pulled this one out because I knew we were doing a Panini ad and I thought it would be appropriate because we both worked at newspapers early in our career. this is a 2022 XR Chris Olavé gold number to 10 rookie card and there's like a newspaper on it's called extra extra can you see that extra extra read all about it that's a PSA 10 too by the way that's that means it's in perfect condition I'm gonna know I don't know if he's cooked or not um you know the concussion thing is it's pretty tough but you know it would very much help if if he had

maybe somebody better throwing in the ball so yeah yeah he got a pretty big shot again on on Sunday. Yeah. I remember, he has a, has very bad luck in season openers too.

So we will, we're rooting for you, Chris Olavay. Ari, let us go to Drew's question. And Drew also following up

on something he asked last month that we answered on the show, he said, bumping this email from last month, believe you guys

said when you answered it in the mailbag episode that if they both were undefeated, they'd undoubtedly be in referring to Tulane and USF.

The idea of Tulane and USF, being 12 and 0 and having wins, USF would have wins against Florida, Miami, and Boise State in that case. Tulane would have wins against Northwestern, Duke, and Ole Miss, and then both of them would have gone undefeated in the American. So Drew says, both of you gave it zero chance,

especially giving USF no chance of winning in Florida. Curious what percentage you guys will give it now. Not asking in and I told you so away. Just fun to check back now that we're here with two great USF wins and Tulane starting off hot. Drew, I do believe you're telling us. us I told you so. I don't blame you one bit. Okay. Yeah. That's part of the game, baby.

Did we say there was, I think we did say there was a zero percent chance they'd be at USF. I can't remember. I thought, I don't think we said zero, but I think we said it was a tall task. And just like we think it's a tall task for them to be Miami this weekend. But that said, what percentage do we give it? Because I said this on the show when Drew's email came through the first time. If this happened, because remember, USF and Tulane do not play each other in the regular season. The first time they would meet would be in the American championship game. So there is a path where both of them could be 12 and 0. I believe if they were both 12 and 0 in the American championship game, it would not matter who won the game. They would

both make the playoff. Now, I think in this situation with the teams they're playing, the chances of Miami and Florida going on to have good seasons, or at least one of them going on to have good seasons higher than the others. So I think if you wanted to guarantee it, you'd want Tulane to beat USF in the American championship game in that scenario because USF would have the better resume going in and then they still both make it. But I do think either way in that situation, if they were both 12 and 0, they'd make it. Now, what is the percentage chance that that happens?

Can I still say zero? I'm not going to say zero. I'm going to say like five. It's not even the non-conference part of it. Tulane's still got Duke this weekend and they go to Ole Miss next week. And then obviously USF's at Miami this week. It's not even just that. It's getting through the American.

Like USF plays at Memphis and at Navy. That's not easy. I'm trying to put together a two-game parlay right now on just the money lines for Duke and oh to get actual percentages yeah yeah so it's 10 to 1 so this would be Tulane and USF winning this weekend just this weekend would be 10 to 1 so and that doesn't even take into account like you said getting through the American or Duke beating Ole Miss as well and you can't know what I think Tulane sorry but I think Tulane sorry but yeah Tulane beating Duke and then beating Ole Miss but yeah Tulane beating Duke and then beating

Ole Miss by itself would be a pretty tough proposition, not to mention that Memphis is on the schedule and, you know, who knows what else could pop up in the middle of a year. You have a sleepwalker game. You know, I think that people think that, like, you have to be Georgia and playing poorly to have a sleepwalk game. No, you just have to be favorite. Like, sleepwalk games happen all the time. Absolutely. I still think that I don't recall, and I'm not going to say that I did not say that there was a zero percent chance that USF would beat Florida, although I might have. I think that what I was trying to say, or what I more likely was saying is that there's a 0% chance that USF beats both.

So if USF beats, should we do like a, if USF beats Miami outright, like I'll have to like do something because like that's not going to happen, right? It could definitely have a burrito up my ass, but can you give me something that's a little bit more like, you know, normal? Yeah, you need to run three miles.

Oh, there's a chance we might be together a little bit in the next couple weeks. Yeah. You're going to have to run three miles, buddy. I mean, that's fine. They're not going to win. Okay. I'm going to I'm going to go pro it I'm going to run alongside you and mock you the entire time

I watched this documentary last night on Netflix because my wife was out of town and there was no football and it was about this woman who was like sending like threatening and mean texts to her daughter like trying to get her to break up of their boyfriend it was pretty wild and I bring this up because I feel like It's like, you're supposed to be my friend here, man. She was supposed to be her mom.

Like, you don't mock me while we're running together. It's for the show. Okay. We're the greatest of friends outside, but it's part of the show. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'll run three miles of South Florida wins. I don't think that's going to happen. I think Miami is going to cover.

I think it's going to be a competitive game. This is not, by the way, yeah, this is not an against the spread situation. This is straight up. Yeah, this is straight up. I think Miami is legitimately at least a top 17 in the country. Like, and that's a conservative guess. What I saw,

like, if Ruben Bain is Ruben Bain, like that's, if that's the player we get all year, because we did not get him last year. So you're saying if Ruben Bain is like Batman's Bane. It'll be very painful. Did I get that?

Is that the right character? Comic books. Only looking for one of us in the wreckage. Yeah. Ruben Bain was not that last year and I wonder if Miami fans like stare at their ceiling at night with a fan blowing wondering whether or not

their team would have made the playoff or done something if they had a game record like that. The way that Ruben Bain wrecked that game against Notre Dame was something. And I don't know that I trust South Florida to throw the ball effectively. Yeah, like Byron Brown, electric. There's a lot of...

I think the thing is when you have to worry about Byron Brown on the ground, it opens up things through the air. Yeah, I mean, I think it might open things up through the air, but Byron Brown also did not have to worry about Ruben Bain and like an elite level defensive line yet. Tyree Sapp. That's pretty good.

Gila Banks didn't play last week, right? So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'll run three months. You know what? Like, listen, if the penalty is me like getting my heart moving a little bit, like, it's probably good for me.

So, I mean, that's okay. As long as I don't have to, I think you're, I think you're to be pleasantly surprised and how good a shape you've gotten into. I actually want you to have to do this just to show yourself how far you come. I need to get, and I don't not have. So like when you, do you still do your eight mile runs? I don't wear my Apple Watch as much. So like, do you still do your five miles?

I don't as much, but I wear it when I run. I have not run more than six miles in a while. Okay. Five or six is the upper limit for me now. If you run five miles, you're in good shape. I don't have proper running shoes. Well, we can, we can fix that too. And because I've been bigger my whole life, the hardest thing for me about running,

even more so than just being just like your cardiovascular health and being out of breath is that it's very painful on my legs and joints. So I need to get possible. I need to get good running shoes that like. Yeah, you need to get the really cushy ones. Now, I actually can't wear the really cushy ones. I did for a while. I had the Nike Zooms, the Nike Zoom flies that are really thick and really bouncy.

And my ankles didn't like that. I have wobbly ankles apparently. and so they don't they they they need to be closer to the ground and so i have to wear the nike free runs with the little thin sole and that works for me so you have to kind of figure out what works for you in fact bruce feldman wears those shoes all the time even to dinner great shoe well listen you know they're very comfortable all the time all right you asked for this are you requested this earlier this week and our friend carter delivered so you were asking about Wisconsin and you said,

I want a Wisconsin fan to send us a very long email about where you're at right now. And boy, did Carter not disappoint. Not only did you send a long email, he sent a color-coded depth chart. So I will start with the email. We'll move to the depth chart.

And if you put the much effort into an email, guys, we're reading it. Okay, like that way. Yeah, I really appreciate Carter for doing this. And obviously, Wisconsin is going to Tuscaloosa to play Alabama. We will point out as far as injury situation. go, Billy Edwards Jr., their quarterback, who is hurt in a non-contact situation in game one, he's going to try to warm up and see what happens.

But nobody's particularly optimistic, so it may be a Danny O'Neill game. Just so you know, if South Florida does beat Miami, which I can't, I can't, I can't this name if South Florida beats Miami. But if USF beats Miami, I'm going to warm up and see how it goes. Like, that's like, frankly, you know, I don't know before I run. Like, I'm just going to be like, yeah, you know, I'll see if I'm feeling it at that time. Beautiful. You'll do it.

About how I determine whether I should run. You will do it. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to go to my process. From Carter, the really long email you asked for. 2019 was our last strong year. This is Wisconsin. It was Jonathan Taylor's last season, end of the season 10 and 4, an embarrassing loss in Illinois, two losses to Ohio State, and a loss of Justin Herbert's Ducks in the Rose Bowl.

2020 started with Graham Mertz making his debut in front of thousands of cardboard cutouts because of COVID. He went 20 of 21 for 248 yards and 5 TDs, and we thought that maybe we were about to take the next step to become a legit CFP contender. The next two games were canceled due to COVID. Then we went on the road and beat Michigan led by Joe Milton, 4911. Remember how Harbaugh wears mask over his headset,

see attached image since that game and the image is on the screen. If you're watching right now, I had memory hold this. and now I'm just, he looks like a plague doctor. Since that game, it's been all downhill. 2021 was a 94 year, but if you look at our schedule, we lost to Penn State, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Minnesota. Not great, but Braylon Allen was a 17-year-old freak that made us believe. 2022, we lose early at home to Washington State and Cam Ward and get embarrassed by Ohio State.

The next week, we get out Wisconsin by Illinois, who is coached by Brett Bilemo, former Wisconsin coach. That's where Paul Chris gets canned and Jim Leonard takes over. I think the majority of the fan base was energized by this. It seems like toward the end, Paul Chris began to take his foot off the gas. We had like three people in the whole recruiting department. Our friend Jesse Temple, who we used to work with the athletic, can tell you this. The rest of the season was still pretty ugly, but most of the fan base was all in on

Leonard to take over. We were blindsided when Luke Fickle was hired, but I think pretty soon we got fired up after hearing him talk and making a few seemingly big splashes in the portal. In 2023, we're all fired up to start the year, excited about the new regime, and hopeful that Phil Longo could bring a passing game to complement our historically good running game. While we didn't have the necessary speed on the outside and Tanner Mordecai got hurt, so we saw a lot of Braden Lockeye.

Mortykeye came back late. We scored 31 points against LSU and had some explosive plays. In 2024, we got dominated home by Alabama and Tyler Van Dyke gets hurt. We get more Bradenlock for the rest of the year. Fickle and Longo do not completely mesh and Phil Longo gets fired for the end of the regular season. Notable losses.

Alabama 42 to 10. USC 3821 Wisconsin led 28 21 7 at halftime Penn State lost 2813 Wisconsin led 10 7 and a half time That's the one where Aller went out and Perbula came in They lost Iowa 42 to 10 They lost 1613 to Oregon and somehow led most of that game That's when I put a pin in that one right there are you They lost 44, 25 to Nebraska 247 to Minnesota

I guess those are all the losses but they were extremely painful 22-year bowl streak ends. The only Big Ten teams, Fickle is beaten in two years. Northwestern, Nebraska, Rutgers, Illinois, and Purdue. Fickle has zero signature wins. The schedule this season, which is actually the toughest in the country. Disagree, but it's definitely the toughest in the Big Ten. Has plenty of opportunities to get a few signature wins. But things could also get ugly quick. Unfortunately, it feels like it'll be more of the latter. The senior QB we paid for in the portal has gone down early for the third year in a row. So poor Carter. He attached week one of the week one too deep, and he color-coded it by fickle and Chris commitment. So Producer River, can you bring up that image? There it is. So the fickle commitments are in, let's see, where's the, where's his code?

I'm trying to find, it's, what he's trying to. trying to say is there's actually a lot of Paul Chris still on this team. The red I believe is Paul Chris. And so greens are Fickle Portal, yellow or fickle out of high school. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the point is that there's a diverse number. It's very colorful. So also, oh, yeah, red Chris commits yellow, fickle high school, green, fickle portal. Also, Carter included a picture that he took with you and me in Madison. Hey, will you hold that picture up real quick, River? There it is. I got my teeth whitened yesterday. How do you guys? I think I did.

Can you, can you? Oh, wonderful. Beautiful. They're still very, it's still very painful. I'm blinded is really what's going on here. You're bad. I mean, like, I don't know what it was. I think it's because I drink a lot of, like, diet sodas or something.

But I brush my teeth, I think above average to average oral hygiene, but my teeth were yellow. So. Good job. Good job, Ari's hygienist. Great work. So thank you, Carter, for that. Carter for that. Remember I said put a pin in that Oregon game last year?

Yeah, put a pin in that. So that is the one game, that is the one thing in the Luke Fickle era that is giving me some sort of pause about my Alabama to cover a three touchdown spread pick. Wasn't that Oregon's worst game, like performance-wise that they played? By far. Okay. By far.

And the thing is, though, I think we could agree that the 2020. Oregon team just as athletic as the 2024 Alabama team that killed Wisconsin and just as athletic as the 2025 Alabama team they're going to play. So if you play that game against Alabama this year, you have a chance.

Alabama has to play bad for this to be like that. Oregon played poorly in that game. It's true, but Wisconsin made them play poorly. Did they? I think so. I watched that game. Wisconsin's defense was really good that game. Yeah, I don't want to get hit by another Midwestern program with the same color scheme as Nebraska.

So I'm going to be nice. Yeah, Wisconsin made them play poorly. I can't do it. You're so mean. I just like, how do you decide? I've got it's been what. It's been a year since that game. So maybe I'm forgetting.

But didn't Oregon have a bunch of like crazy unforced turnovers in that game? They did they? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They did. I just like, where do you draw the line between like really good team plays like ass and really average to below average team makes good team play like ass?

Listen, Ari, I'm trying to make this Alabama and Wisconsin game sexy for you. I'm trying to give Carter some hope here's the good thing. You're not helping me. We took a picture with Carter. I like this guy. Alabama could very well play like ass on its own too. Oh, my God. They could have the tied people all over.

no they beat louisiana merrose 73 to nothing they're still bama the the graphic said it okay wait so like are we like doing we're nice to everybody routine right now or like can we be mean to everybody uh we can do whatever we want we can say whatever we want and i listen i picked alabama to cover for a reason here i think this game is going to go very similarly to the one last year i'm saying if you had to pick a team that was previously in the top 10 10 days ago that could theoretically make play like ass on their own i think alabama Gamma fans would probably be the first at the front of the line to agree with me that they are not reliable. They've played, they've lost four times to unranked opponents.

Yeah. I'm not making stuff up. Like, it's in the data. Like, here's the thing. Like, this is not Luke Fickle's only opportunity this year to have a big win. As Carter pointed out, the schedule is incredibly difficult. Like, Wisconsin is going to have lots of chances to have big wins. But unfortunately, that also means that they're not good, they're going to get blown out of some of these games.

I mean, it is a pretty gnarly schedule. Ohio State, Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, and Oregon, and Indiana, and Illinois, and on the road at Minnesota, which is a rivalry game, and Iowa, and at, oh, they got Washington home. At least they don't have to go to Seattle, at least. This is one of the toughest schedules in the country this year, no question. Oh, yeah. It's definitely the toughest in the Big Ten, by far, and then one of the three or four toughest in the country. Let's say, and I'm going to make up this scenario, can you put the schedule back up a more time, River for me? Thank you.

Let's say they beat Ohio State at home this year because Wisconsin has in the past beaten Ohio State at home. But they lose to Bama, Michigan, Oregon, Indiana, and Minnesota. Is that still a signature win? Yes. Okay. At this point, based on what we've seen, yes. I think the signature wins are also in the context of how well you did in a year.

It's like, well, and also. That wouldn't be a, that wouldn't be a. But also, it also depends on how these games go. If you beat Ohio State and you barely like you lose in one possession games to Alabama and Michigan and Oregon and Illinois, like that's different. But if you're losing by four touchdowns to those teams and you beat Ohio State, then yeah, it was an aberration. Yeah, I guess, yeah. Carter, I don't know. I don't have much for you.

And I feel for you because Wisconsin went from being one of the most consistently above average programs. in the country to kind of being middle of the road. And I don't think it was just because the Big Ten did away with the divisions. I don't think that's it. I think they've gone down as a program when Brett Bilem was there in the early Paul Chris days, they were a better program. And I'm surprised that Luke Fickle didn't get them back there. And he still has a chance to, but the climb is very steep.

Yeah. I would feel really, really good if I understood, like, and I feel like maybe I would if I just like called fickle and talked to him for 10 minutes on the phone, I have a hard time deciphering what Wisconsin's overall plan is. Well, I think the plan changed. The idea originally was you're going to bring in Phil Longo, who has had in the past married a very good rushing offense with a spread that lets you throw the ball down the field. They were looking for that 20-20 North Carolina offense with Sam Hal and Carter and Williams, the two good running backs.

That's what that was the ideal that they were going for that said Phil Longo had run, but they didn't do that. So that's the other question I've always had about Wisconsin. Because when they hired Longo, obviously we know that did not work. Would it have worked if they had three players that were on NFL rosters right now? Like Sam Hale, Giovante Williams, and who's the other? one. Michael Carter. Michael Carter were all, and those guys weren't just going. And that's the part that shocked me because my, my assumption was Luke Fickle would not have even taken the Wisconsin job, would not have left Cincinnati unless Wisconsin said, hey, you're going to get the resources to go get the players

you need. But you can't run an offense without those NFL play. They didn't have the players to run it. Well, and that's what, why don't they have them? That's what that's not like they're broke. And I think you need to fix why you don't have them and not what you're trying to do. Yeah. And also, if Wisconsin's plan is to go back to what Wisconsin was in 2015, which is a 10-win team that runs the ball down their throat, everybody else in the Big Ten does what they did better than they did in 2015, and would Luke Fickle have even taken the job knowing that that's what you have to revert back to to save yourself?

Because I thought that the whole point in the appeal of taking the Wisconsin job to begin with was to take them from that to something bigger, not to revert back to it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't get it. It's one of the strangest, just series of events. Because again, why would you take that job if you didn't get the resources promised to go get players? Or if you did and you're just not using them, why aren't you? Right.

So that's, Wisconsin is kind of an interesting puzzle. And I appreciate Carter for writing in. listening to the show and being supportive of the show. I don't know if we made him feel better. But I don't know. I don't think there's a way to make him feel better. I think the schedule is what it is. And the situation is very difficult for them.

So we'll find out. One more is from our guy, Stephen San Antonio. And he knows how to, how to tickle us. From Steve and San Antonio, I do not have a question on this email. I don't want to get into my process or logic right now. sorry i tried i tried it tried it on my wife today how to go about as well as you'd expect what was the disagreement making the bed she has told me many times how she would like to see the bed made oh and i don't make the bed in the morning person yeah but i don't do it exactly right

yeah no crap and so it wasn't it wasn't to her specifications and she's like how come I tell you how to do this a hundred times and you still can't do it. And I said, I don't want to get into my process or logic right now. And I stand by it. The funny thing is that they have no context of where it's coming from. Like, I'm going to do it to Brittany. I haven't done it yet. She was out of town yesterday.

I'm going to do it to her at some point. And she's not going to get where it's from. And she's just going to think that's my response. And she might hit me. She might. But when you, tell the story on the show, everybody in the audience would be like, yeah, that's right. I don't want to get into my process or logic right now either.

Everybody enjoy your process and your logic and the games. They're going to be awesome this week. Friday night, you got Colorado, Houston. You got the Arizona and Kansas State game that Tyler Shoemaker mentioned. Which we're all going to be on. So that makes it more interesting. It didn't make this graphic, but I'm going to be locked in for that. Yep. Saturday. Bamma, Wisconsin, Clemson, Georgia Tech, USC, Purdue, USF, Miami, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Bandy, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, LSU, Texas, Santa, Notre Dame. It's all happening. We'll talk to you on Saturday.